“People were stumbling, falling, trying to get up. They were dehydrated, getting disorientated, they were dying in front of our eyes,” said Pietermaritzburg businessman Zaid Bayat, 43, by telephone from Mina.

“They were suffocating. We tried to help revive them, but for every person you were helping, there were 13 or 14 others just falling down. It was very traumatic.”

Bayat said he believed the trouble began when a group of a few thousand turned, and in stifling heat, began moving against the flow of worshippers taking part in the Hajj’s last major rite near the holy Islamic city of Mecca.

“A group of people, maybe a few thousand, began moving back after they had performed a ritual. I think that is how it started. It was very difficult because there were people in wheelchairs in that group, and also in the rest moving forward, people in wheel chairs on both sides, so people started panicking.”

Bayat said in desperation some tried to climb over the perimeter and onto the roofs and into the tents of camps set up along the road.

“They were trying to get out, trying to get past the police barricades, to get away.”

He said he was leading a group of about 70 South Africans, one of whom is diabetic and had collapsed, and had taken them into a Moroccan camp to rest and drink water when he realised something was happening outside.

“If it had been another two minutes we would have been right in the middle of it. About ten of us went out and tried to help the people. ”

Bayat said his group was the last of some 2,000 South Africans taking part in the annual pilgrimage and he believed the others had all been safely elsewhere when the deadly stampede happened. The latest toll for the tragedy is 717 people killed and another 863 injured.

The president of the Muslim Judicial Council, Moulama Ihsaan Hendricks, said he had been in contact with South Africans in Mina and had not heard of any South Africans seriously injured or killed in the tragedy.

“According to our records, there is no South Africans that have died in the stampede,” Hendricks said but added that the local Muslim community was deeply touched by the deadliest incident during the pilgrimage in 25 years.

“While we are celebrating Eid, our hearts and our emotions are deeply with the pilgrims, not just the South Africans but all pilgrims. This stampede comes as a shock to our community.”

Clayson Monyela from the department of international relations said late on Thursday that at this stage the department was not aware of any South African casualties.

Mohamad Hosain Khan, the defence attache at the South African embassy in Riyadh, said the mission had been monitoring the situation but it appeared all South African pilgrams were safe.

“So far it appears nobody from South Africa has been injured or killed in the stampede. Our consul-general has been interacting with travel agencies but so far we are in the clear.”

ANA